Main characters Rita and Frank are the only two characters whom we see on stage, though other people are referred to by both of them. We hear about Denny, Rita's husband, about Julia, Frank's partner, and about Trish, Rita's flatmate, who attempts to kill herself. But it is Rita and Frank whom the audience gets to know best.

Rita: Rita is a working-class, twenty-six-year-old hairdresser who has taken the decisive step of enrolling on a literature course at the Open University. It has been a difficult decision as it means that she has to break away from the restrictions imposed on her by her husband and by the community in which she lives and works. Indeed, Rita's choice is a stark one: it is between starting a family, which Denny wants, or studying. In deciding to study and become more educated and culturally aware, Rita changes her life completely.

Poster for the film.

Samuel French acting edition cover

Rita Stapleton

She gradually becomes absorbed by culture and literature. It is only after her flatmate attempts suicide that she begins to realise that art and literature cannot provide all the answers. However, she decides to continue as a student and finally passes her examination.

Frank: Frank is a university lecturer in English Literature with a drink problem. He has had one failed marriage and his present relationship wit Julia is not an easy one. However, he does appear to have a comfortable middle-class lifestyle and has achieved some minor success as a poet. His job, nevertheless, bores him and, in fact, by the end of the play, he has been sent away to Australia by the university authorities because of his drunken behaviour. Rita breezes into his life like a breath of fresh air; the story of the play is the story of their developing and changing relationships both as teacher and student and on a more personal level.

More European Literature essays:

... Frank becomes more dependant on her, and as she breaks away, losing her individuality, as he sees it, to become a 'proper student' he regrets ever educating her, and in despair turns to alcohol. As soon as Rita begins to become properly educated ...

... Rita Educating Rita was first performed in 1980; it was copyrighted by Willy Russell and firstly printed in 1981. The Content Basically, Educating Rita is about a 26-year-old woman (Rita S. White) who decided to take a literature course at the Open University, and her tutor (Frank ...

... Educating Rita is a play about Rita, a working class hairdresser who yearns for a change in her life and to be better educated; also it is about a dissipated literature professor who tutors Rita to earn some extra money. Rita decides to become educated to improve her life style; she ...

... Frank: that's not true. You've...' They understand that they have got to go their separate ways now, and move their lives on, but they part on good terms. Rita begins as a stereotypical working-class girl, with a poor education, who hid behind humour. She ...

... literature and uses a higher standard of English. You can see this in Act I, Scene 4 when Frank and Rita were talking about her "Peer Gynt" essay where her response was "Do it on the radio." Frank could not believe what she ...